Unhappiness and War Mongering

maddskillz · Jan 19, 2016

OK, I am really a big fan of Civ . . . but this unhappiness deal when rolling through cities is driving me crazy. What are you supposed to do when they are blatantly settling near you, stealing techs, flipping cities with their religion and talking <snip>.

You should be able to wipe them from the globe without having to micromanage a bunch of sad-sack hippies. It's taking all the fun out of the game!

Is there not some way to dial down this ridiculous amount of unhappiness just for sacking some cities that are your rivals and expanding your empire? Even courthouses don't help much, it's really ruining the experience for me.

Am I the only one here? I am rushing to build happiness wonders, zoos, circuses, coliseums etc . . . but it doesn't really help. HELP! I want to love this game, but this sucks.

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Browd · Jan 19, 2016

If you prefer, you can just raze any cities that you take (can't raze Capitals, Holy Cities, or City-States, but everything else is disposable). You will have to deal with the unhapppiness during the razing process, but after that's done, it's as if they never were there.

maddskillz · Jan 20, 2016

I tried raising cities and it ends in lot's of unhappy folks too ... so that isn't the best solution.

I moved up to King, I guess the unhappiness factor is higher on war mongering at this level. Anyone have thoughts on best way to attain happiness while going for world domination? Thanks

SupremacyKing2 · Jan 20, 2016

maddskillz said:
I tried raising cities and it ends in lot's of unhappy folks too ... so that isn't the best solution.

The unhappiness is temporary. It goes away when the city goes away.

I moved up to King, I guess the unhappiness factor is higher on war mongering at this level. Anyone have thoughts on best way to attain happiness while going for world domination? Thanks

Honestly, I don't find the unhappiness to be that bad. All it does is slow you down. Once you have courthouses and a few happiness buildings, the unhappiness is pretty manageable.

Don't try to conquer too fast. Conquer a couple cities, stop and wait, build courthouses as soon as the revolt stops, rush buy some happiness buildings. When your happiness is positive again, conquer the next city and then stop again. Rinse and repeat.

liv · Jan 20, 2016

Early expansion can be hard. You should burn down cities without new luxuries for sure. Maybe puppet the ones you must have (but razing everything else). No mercy

other things that help happiness is
-luxuries. Build your cities for luxuries. Try trades before you get too unpopular.
-ally city states to get their luxuries
-buildings and wonders. Playing on King you can get some good wonders still. Forbidden palace is good.
-social policies. Liberty has a good expansion happiness policy if you connect cities.
-religion. If you can get a good religion you can get happiness from that.

Once ideologies kick in you can choose order and get happiness from monuments and other things. For later warmongering free courthouses are great. Once ideology kicks in you can maintain really large empire without much happiness issues.

sixty4half · Jan 20, 2016

Go Autocracy, get less unhappiness from Annexed cities and courthouses are built in half time. Then build Prora in a coastal city. This'll give you lots of happiness back.

Puhi · Jan 20, 2016

a good trick to raze a city faster is to capture it with a mounted unit or tank and withdraw on the same turn. with luck, the ai will recapture it - cutting the population in half again. then you retake it again, cutting the population in half once again. the city (and associated unhappiness) will disappear much faster.

sixty4half · Jan 20, 2016

Puhi said:
a good trick to raze a city faster is to capture it with a mounted unit or tank and withdraw on the same turn. with luck, the ai will recapture it - cutting the population in half again. then you retake it again, cutting the population in half once again. the city (and associated unhappiness) will disappear much faster.

Doesn't this also increase your warmonger status since you're taking foreign cities multiple times?

Not a concern if everyone already hates you, but if you have a couple of AIs that are forgiving of early warmongering using that strategy might be the tipping point for them.

Sclb · Jan 21, 2016

Well, warmongering usually not a concern later in the conquest when happiness is a serious issue since most hate you anyway. You can also gift captured cities to other AI to reduce unhappiness if the city isn't essential and you have open borders. If you don't have open borders you have to be careful since it might move your units to somewhere where you might get killed.

Plumfairy · Jan 21, 2016

sixty4half said:
Doesn't this also increase your warmonger status since you're taking foreign cities multiple times?

I think you only get the warmonger hit once per city, not once per capture.

I haven't verified this, though. Honestly, this situation doesn't arrive all that often... usually when you withdraw your unit the AI can't retake it in one turn, and I rarely want to wait around for several turns just for this trick.

The war machine must carry on! Lots of other cities to visit and conquer, you know.

Trackmaster · Jan 21, 2016

Warmonger doesn't necessarily hurt your unhappiness (unless you're annexing a city without a courthouse, which is dumb), it's just hard to maintain happiness with a high number of cities and a high population without the happiness buildings, luxury resources, and policies. So you'd be having the same problem if you just expanded naturally.

LordBullaVI · Jan 21, 2016

Build Courthouse in occupied cities, but until you have more luxuries, buildings or policies to make the people more happy, annex the conquered cities as puppets.

ThorHammerz · Jan 21, 2016

Plumfairy said:
I think you only get the warmonger hit once per city, not once per capture.

I haven't verified this, though. Honestly, this situation doesn't arrive all that often... usually when you withdraw your unit the AI can't retake it in one turn, and I rarely want to wait around for several turns just for this trick.

The war machine must carry on! Lots of other cities to visit and conquer, you know.

WM applies each time a city is captured by you, regardless of the number of times it has already changed hands.

That being said, if you're on a killing spree, most of the AIs will probably already hate you enough that the extra WM penalty (from capturing a city multiple times) will be inconsequential.

beetle · Jan 21, 2016

ThorHammerz said:
That being said, if you're on a killing spree, most of the AIs will probably already hate you enough...

I don’t know about that. I am probably not warmongering hard enough, but I seem to be able to keep friends right up until I DoW. WM penalty does not accrue with civs that you are also at war with the civ you are taking out. The AIs love to dog pile, so that is not too hard to arrange. So if they all are at war with the civ you are recapturing a city from, that bit won’t matter.

Sclb · Jan 21, 2016

Another penalty from fast war mongering is the fast expanding penalty, since AI don't care that you settle cities or conquer cities and they will backstab you if you have too many cities quickly. This is unrelated to the warmongering penalty and that's why even friends can backstab even if they're fighting the same war.

GenuineRisk · Jan 21, 2016

Sclb said:
You can also gift captured cities to other AI to reduce unhappiness if the city isn't essential and you have open borders.

I do this extensively with civs that I resurrect since you get permanent open borders with them.

mzprox · Jan 22, 2016

I think captured cities should not increase unhappyness while they are in resistance. IT1s quite stupid.. you finally got your enemies capital and for some reason your empire is unhappy, soldiers refuse to fight efficiently and you can't even buy a colosseum in your new city. And i like the idea that cities can't be insta razed, but razing should be much faster, or at least not linear with population.

Trackmaster · Jan 22, 2016

mzprox said:
I think captured cities should not increase unhappyness while they are in resistance. IT1s quite stupid.. you finally got your enemies capital and for some reason your empire is unhappy, soldiers refuse to fight efficiently and you can't even buy a colosseum in your new city. And i like the idea that cities can't be insta razed, but razing should be much faster, or at least not linear with population.

I think it makes sense that you conquered cities would cause unhappiness hits. Surviving citizens wouldn't be thrilled having to submit to a new leader and basically being treated like slaves. And the current citizens would probably be worried about the emperor getting involved in too many wars. But over a generation or two people would forget and stop caring like what always happens.

ThorHammerz · Jan 22, 2016

beetle said:
WM penalty does not accrue with civs that you are also at war with the civ you are taking out.

This statement is incorrect: the warmonger penalty is still applied, but with its weight halved at 50%. So while you can indeed manipulate a dog-pile, it is not a complete get-out-of-jail-free card.

beetle · Jan 22, 2016

ThorHammerz said:
This statement is incorrect: the warmonger penalty is still applied, but with its weight halved at 50%.

Thanks for that clarification, my bad.

Unhappiness and War Mongering

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